Long Paw spat thoughtfully.
He paused in the postern, leaned back, and shouted ‘Toby! Michael!’
He couldn’t see the captain’s valet or his squire. ‘JACQUES!’ he roared.
A nun – tall and pretty despite her hollow eyes – came to the postern. ‘May I help?’ she asked.
‘Captain’s in trouble. Tell Bad – tell Ser Thomas we’ll need relays of arrows and all the men in harness.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll tell him.’
‘See you do, lass,’ Long Paw spat carefully to one side, flashed her his best smile, turned, and ran down the long path to catch up with the others.
Lissen Carak – Harmodious
Harmodius watched the bustle in the courtyard as he climbed past the two men-at-arms arguing – reached the wall-
It was worse than he had thought.
He ran, barefoot, along the wall to the apple tree.
Summoned power, and raised his staff . . .
Lissen Carak – The Abbess
The Abbess watched the day watch form under her window. There was something particularly well-ordered about the company. Their scarlet jupons, their bright polished armour. They made her feel safe even when she knew that she was anything but.
Even as she watched – looking for the captain, and missing him, and assigning herself a penance for looking, all in one thought – the woman who wore men’s armour shouted an order, and all of the men on the right of the formation turned and followed her.
There was suddenly an air of crisis – men moved in many directions.
She reached out-
She felt well-slept and immensely strong. She walked across her solar to the windows on the outer wall, three hundred feet above the fields below, and looked out.
Her fields seethed as if covered in maggots.
Her feeling of revulsion was more than physical.
A pair of her novices, alerted by her movements, appeared with a cup of warm wine and a fur-lined robe. She drank the one and shrugged on the other while the older novice brushed her hair.
‘Hurry,’ she said.
She put light shoes on her feet, pulled the mantle of her profession over her fur robe and was off while the creatures in the fields below were still merely a tide lapping at the foundations, and not a mighty wave.
She collected the crozier – the crooked staff that the Abbess bore by tradition, with a curious green stone head.
And then she ran, like a much younger woman, for her bower – her apple tree.
She was shocked to find another there. Not just there, but swimming in her power.
‘Master Magus,’ she said, coming to a stop.
‘Lady Abbess,’ he said. ‘I’m working.’
Even as she paused, he raised his staff. His power was visible. His whole form gave off tendrils of power.
The Lower Town, Lissen Carak – The Red Knight
The captain watched the enemy’s creatures gather. They were well within bowshot, and No Head and his fellows began to pink them. The two youngest archers carried sheaves of fresh shafts from the second floor, and the older men began to loose.
The captain had seen archers in action before, had watched his men practise at the butts, but he’d never watched a dozen professionals at full stretch.
He’d fussed at No Head while the older man felt the breeze, and carefully arranged his sheaves in brackets for the purpose set into the wall – little iron buckets.
The two senior men – No Head and Kanny – raised their bows, loosed, discussed their aiming points, and watched the fall of their shafts.
‘Over,’ said Kanny. It was a different tone of voice from his usual hectoring, barracks-lawyer voice.
‘Over,’ No Head said. ‘Ready, lads?’
He raised his bow, and every man on the tower raised his in emulation, and they all loosed together. Their arrows rose and rose, and before they had begun to fall the next flight was on its way.
Down on the plain, the distant irks screamed their defiance, showed their hooked teeth, patted their backsides and hefted their spears.
There were a thousand of them – more, most likely. In their homespun greens and their leathers and brown skin, they looked as if they’d been grown from the earth under their feet.
The first flight of arrows struck. They all struck together, and tore a small whole in the great patchwork of brown-green irks.
The phalanx of spears moved a step closer.
The second flight struck.
And the third.
And the fourth.
The regiment of irks started to look like a piece of leather on a shoemaker’s bench punched with an awl. And again, and again. The punches only made small holes. But it made a great many of them.
The irks screamed, their handsome elfin faces contorted into masks of rage, and they charged.
‘Fast as you can, boys,’ No Head called.
His arms became a blur of motion. He drew and loosed, took a shaft from his bracket, nocked, drew, and loosed so quickly that the captain had difficulty sorting his actions.
Brat, the youngest archer, opened a linen sack and dumped the shafts, points first, into No Head’s bracket, and ran to load the next archer.
Kanny was grunting with every draw. The sound was so frequent and rhythmic it was obscene.
The irks had little or no armour, and no shields. As they crossed the three hundred paces to the breaches in the northern wall, they left a trail of wounded and dead creatures behind them. It was as if the whole phalanx was a wounded animal, bleeding little corpses.
They reached the first breach.
Kanny ran dry of arrows, and had to pause to get his own bundle. Brat couldn’t keep up. One by one, the bows stopped twanging.
‘They’re not going anywhere,’ No Head said calmly. ‘Don’t rush. Everyone get their quivers full again. Brat, you get one more load up here and join us on the wall.’
The captain felt superfluous.
Lissen Carak – Sauce
Cuddy watched the first charge out of the slits of one of the covered ways halfway up the ridge. Then he ran down the steps to Sauce.
‘They’re going to need help,’ he said.
She glared at him.
‘We can hit them from down there,’ he said, pointing to the lower path. ‘With arrows.’ He continued. The men- at-arms tended to forget the power of the bows.
Sauce paused. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s go!’
They pounded down the track – over a streambed, down steep steps, around a long curve, and then they were
